Amusement parks, museums, shopping centers, and other attraction, retail, or entertainment-based properties often host interactive experiences to attract in-person visits by customers and increase popularity and customer engagement. For example, an amusement park builds a new ride in connection with a movie release in order to capitalize on the popularity of the movie and increase customer interaction and involvement with the franchise. In fact, entertainment businesses often heavily rely on the interactive experiences available at theme parks to build synergies with their franchises. As another example, a shopping mall hosts an interactive holiday-themed play-place for children to increase customer traffic and drive sales for its resident retailers. As yet another example, animal or nature-themed parks, such as zoos, are home to many diverse exotic and rare breed animals and host interactive shows featuring those animals in order to entice customers to visit.
However, the attractions available at many properties often require substantial investment and are limited in scope. For example, a theme park may only be geared towards one or a fixed set of static, specific concepts, franchises, or themes at any given time. These attractions must be routinely updated, requiring even more investment when a movie loses popularity, or as soon as the seasons change or a holiday passes. Attractions such as rides require significant installation costs that vary based on the scope and features of the ride. Other attractions carry significant danger and risks to customers or patrons associated with riding or operation of the attraction. Further, common attractions at parks fail to tailor the experience based on any particular user and instead provide the same cookie-cutter experience for each user that visits the attraction. Moreover, the rise of in-home virtual reality or otherwise virtually interactive experiences available through the internet or gaming consoles may prevent customers from attending a park in person. If consumers are not compelled by the attractions at a given park, they may choose to stay home instead. Accordingly, parks are constantly under pressure to invest more to upgrade attractions in order to keep customers happy.
Animal or nature-themed parks face many additional challenges in addition to the economic challenges described above. Animal and nature-park grounds require meticulous maintenance, and the often unwieldy animals that live there require round the clock care and supervision. Skilled veterinary medical practitioners must also be on call in case any number of animals experience a health issue. Native environments must be maintained for resident animals by horticultural experts, and the animals must be provided native stimulation on a daily basis to avoid depressive effects. In fact, some animal rights activists have called attention to and even gained popularity protesting the living conditions for animals at several large animal parks.